The above line got a big laugh when Carl Paladino opened with it following a swift and non-controversial voice vote that handed him the ballot line formerly occupied by Rick Lazio.

“I had a great team before I walked in here,” Paladino told the crowd at the Holiday Inn in Colonie, “and now I’ve got the greatest team.”

That team now includes Conservative chairman Michael Long, who just before the Sept. 14 primary called Paladino “a dangerous candidate” — a comment that Long amended slightly as he answered press questions with Paladino at his side: The candidate was dangerous, he said, “to the liberals of this state and to the dysfunction of Albany.”

Earlier in the meeting, Long was voted to another term as the party’s state chair.

Paladino’s acceptance makes it far more likely the Conservative party will meet the 50,000-vote threshold necessary for it to maintain its place on the state ballot. Lazio bowed out on Monday without endorsing Paladino, who he lumped in with Democrat Andrew Cuomo as “flawed individuals.” Lazio was hastily nominated for a Supreme Court judgeship — one of the get-off-the-ballot mechanisms that would have allowed the party to replace him with Paladino, and certainly easier to pull off than Lazio’s death or departure from New York.

Long insisted the party hadn’t tossed Lazio aside to secure its ballot line.

“It came about that Mr. Lazio and Mr. Paladino and the Conservative party had more in common,” he said. “We realize that New York and the citizens of this state have a chance to build a future for their children and their grandchildren. We all have one thing in common: Andrew Cuomo should not be elected governor of the state of New York.”

In addition to a few proxy abstentions, the only vote against Paladino came from Ross Brady, a Kings County delegate. Outside the meeting, a slightly subdued Brady said his vote was “a matter of conscience.”

After examining Paladino’s policies, “I couldn’t find any meat as to how he would govern,” said Brady, who supported Lazio.

Nevertheless, the dissenting delegate said Long’s decision was “the right thing for the party.”

[Photo credit corrected: Apologies to the outstanding Mike Groll of the AP.]

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